Google Chrome 4.0 with extensions support out of beta

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Jos

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Google has been supporting extensions in the beta release of Chrome for a few months now. However, for those of you who prefer staying on the safe side, the company just pushed out a new stable release which finally brings the much sought after feature to the Windows version of its browser. Google is also touting more than 1,500 extensions in its gallery -- which pales compared to Firefox but it's certainly nothing to sneeze at.

In addition to Extensions, another feature that's moving from the beta channel to stable is Bookmark Sync, which allows users to move from one machine to another while keeping all their favorite links to hand. Google Chrome 4.0 (4.0.249.78) also includes support for several new HTML5 features like LocalStorage, a handful of security fixes, and several performance improvements. The build is supposedly 42% faster than Chrome 3 and 400 percent faster than Chrome 1.

The new release comes less than a week after Mozilla updated its Firefox browser to version 3.6, and as Google's browser is racing past Apple Safari in popularity. If you haven't tried Chrome yet, now would be a good time to download it and give all these new features a spin.

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Chrome is ok as a browser but nothing special really; so i wouldn't be bothered to switching it for foreseeable future.
 
One of the things putting me off using Chrome is the lack of smooth scrolling - it's quite annoying when reading pages of text. Also I find it's the same speed as Firefox on my computer.

One of the things I do like about Chrome is its incognito mode which opens up a separate window. That's the only time I use it really.
 
@slh28: There's an extension called SmoothScroll that might help with that.

I've been using Chrome almost exclusively ever since they introduced extensions support in the beta version. For me, it's much faster than Firefox and now offers 'nearly' the same functionality (there's just one add-on I'm still missing from Firefox)
 
I updated Chrome but the "Extensions" bit is greyed out though.
There's 2 extensions in Firefox I couldn't live without though - Fire Gestures and Tab Mix Plus. I wonder if similar extensions exist in Chrome?
 
Chrome is my browser of choice - use it almost exclusively on Windows (there are times when I need to launch FF or IE.) It's also considerably faster than FF on any of my machines, even a bare-bones install of FF. I also use Chromium on linux, but I actually prefer Safari on the Mac now that it has progressed to version 4.x. I'm not a big extensions/plugins guy and the only things I really use of FF are NoScript, Firebug, and ReloadEvery. I don't even use the delicious plugin anymore.

As I've mentioned in a different post, if I'm recommending browsers to non-techies it will usually be FireFox because I believe most users are more patient with computers than I am.
 
I just switched to chrome from FF. I liked FF but mine got pretty infected. The font seems to skinny atm but I will change that. Finally found my other bookmarks thing. All browsers need a big refresh button, chromes is a little bigger the FF's, still small. I just ransacked there addons, a ton of ad blockers I really like them. Even got some for yahoo, the pirate bay and facebook specific. I am pretty impressed I dont know if FF had them, if so I never saw em. Then again I haven't browsed there plugins for years. I am missing one thing google toolbar! Sounds silly right? Well when I am waiting for a page to load I like typing in my next search in the tool bar then opening a new tab and searching. I hope to find one by tomorrow.
 
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